Tag Archives: Mining

Welcome to the fifth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog BanterThis month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks “Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is “ruining the game”?“

articles at the bottom of this post!

When I first started playing I quickly realized how difficult it would be to keep my pvp character in a ship considering the sheer number of ship losses one will amass both learning and practicing PvP. Within my first couple of months I created my second account, a mining alt. Over the months it’s been both a god send and a bane having two accounts.

For one, it doubles the cost of play. Having and paying for two accounts truly turns Eve into a hobby more than just a casual game. Second, the cost to actually train that character up can be quite expensive. To simply get that character in a Hulk with T2 fits will run over 250+mil with the cost of the ship, learning books for both the exhumer and learning skills, and implants to train faster.

You have to ask yourself if there are certain professions in this game that just plain flat out require two accounts to work and be fun. Take capital pilots for instance. Do you really want to trust someone with creating a cyno field for you to jump or have to wait for them to show up and hope they do it right? Most Cap pilots I know have a cyno alt who’s only job is to creaty cyno fields they way the Cap pilot wants. Then of course there are pirates and pvpers. Many whom I know have alts that trade or mine, just to keep the isk flowing in for those inevitable losses. Many second accounts are the result of players who are 3-8 months into the game who realize they didn’t optimize their current characters attributes when creating it and now are suffering with training time and maybe spending to much time not focusing on their profession. This happens to many new players who just don’t know what everything means when they are in that character creation system for the first time. They don’t want to give up their current character due to the simple fact that they have SOME SP at least so they create a second account and skill up a new character the right way.

There are a number of reasons to have an alt, but there are certainly many people who don’t. Many casual players just find it overkill and would much rather spend their time and isk on bettering their main character.

Is it meta-gaming? I’m not sure. There are those who beleive that it’s unfair. But in reality, like I stated above, some professions gain a lot from having another account. CCP seems to have no stance on the subject, though having no rules regarding it might be a stance in and of itself.

If you’ve been following this blog you know the last couple of weeks has been crazy for me. Moved my corp into 0.0 and setup a large POS. Just a few weeks ago I spent hours a day happily mining away in empire making 15-25 mil per day. Now I spend my days mining ice, not because I want to, but because I have to. A large POS eats up quite a bit of fuel. I’ve been hitting the best ice possible for racial isotopes but I still need to mine for hours a day to keep up. Most of the corp still can’t use ice harvesters and getting them together for OPs is shotty at best. Now for those of you who have ice mined, you know how boring it is. The nice thing about it is you can set your harvesters on an ice rock and go afk for awhile. Imagine ice mining, but having to stare at local for hours. Thank god for hulu so I can watch some lost in a small window box.

It’s been extremely stressful to say the least. 0.0 is supposed to be fun. I really need to sit down and come up with a plan to keep up with the ice without killing myself. Will I be able to pull in the type of cash I used to? Probably not, but I NEED to be able to pull in some money so I can buy the big toys I like. If not, I’ll burn out and not log in at all. I find myself taking breaks and just playing BF2 or some other mindless game.

I guess part of the problem is the corp structure. Everyones out ratting and mining helping themselves while I”m left out having to ice mine. My executive officer is out of commision for awhile while he sorts out some RL stuff which doesn’t help. I guess I need to start cracking the whip in some areas. I think some new blood in the corp would help greatly as well.

Hopefully things will fall into place a bit better in the coming weeks. Just need to keep at it and keep delegating. Thanks for listening to the rant!

Its that time again. This week we will be taking a look at the slow, but hardy Exequror.

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I have to say, this is one of the weirder ships to fit that I have come across. Because of the slot arrangement and CPU/Powergrid, it just isn’t exceptionally good at anything its bonuses offer for a ship purpose. It has bonuses for cargo holds which lends itself well for mining lasers, but you can’t fit a full rack of T2 lasers and have enough CPU left for anything else really. It has range bonuses for remote armor reps, yet to run a full 4 rack of medium RRs requires you to fit the rest of the ship for cap stability mods. One thing is for sure, its tough, slow and any enemy won’t know what you’ve got when you drop one on the field.

I’ve been toying with one for the past few weeks as I’ve been considering an Oneiros skill training path. If you don’t know, the logisitics ships in this game including the Basalisk and Oneiros are 100% badass. They can easily negate hundreds of DPS off the field. Obviously this means they get called primary quick and when your always primary and fly around a 75mil isk ship, well you can see why it isn’t a glamorous job. I toyed with the idea of a cheaper alternative. After playing around in EFT it was quickly apparent that while the range bonuses for the Remote Reps were nice, the cap stability mods needed to permarun them was just insane. So it CAN be a halfway decent RR ship, but 4 med. remote reps aren’t going to change the game on the field. I learned this the hard way when I brought it out on a POS takedown the other night. It just doesn’t have the RR capability to really be viable. Its lack of any local defenses means its more of a impedement on the field than an asset.

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Remote Rep Exequror:As you can see there are just too many cap stability mods needed to keep this thing going. You ABSOLUTELY need to be able to permarun remote reps if thats what your bringing to the gang. I think this could really be a nice, simple and cheap alternative to the expensive oneiros. Some bonuses to the reps as well as RR Cap reduction and CPU bonuses would fix this. Why give it the range bonuses? From the looks of the standard fits, it seems like this ship is almost broken in this area. Can’t fit med RRs without the rest of your slots taken up, and fitting smalls just doesn’t make sense. What is with the damn drone bay? 40m/3?!

Mining Exequror:

Mining on this ship just makes sense. Works great for an indy pilot who is pining for a retriever. Lots of cargo space and a drone bay make it perfect for mining in a 1.0-.6 system. Again, we see that this ship is just gimped in the CPU area considering what its bonuses are. Even so, this should be what every gallente indy pilot shoots for when they first start the game. It’s going to yield some halfway decent cash for a newbie.

As you can see from everything I pointed out, Its just weird how CCP has set this one up. This ship has some serious issues. Those aside though, its a decent mining ship and I remember loving the damn thing when I first started the game. It will always have a special place in my heart.

A couple of nights ago my corpmates and I were out in a belt happily mining away, myself in an Orca. A pilot warps in in a rifter (a pilot we have had run ins with before). He proceeds to can flip one of our members and goes blinky. Our security director happily pods him. The pilot then returns in yet another rifter and attempts to shoot one of our members and is quickly concorded. You would think that after all of this he has at least learned he can’t can flip properly or that he can’t just go around shooting people in high sec (I mean seriously? The game warns you before doing it). He then proceeds to return and try to can flip another member of our corp. He makes the mistake of making a new can and taking the time to name it and all before trying to transfer the ore. In this short period I locked the can with my Orca and started to tractor it in and quickly added the ore to my cargohold. He then attempts to shoot me while concord is already in the belt. One of the concord frigates quickly one shots him and he warps out. He then returns and tries to flip again and is quickly killed by our security director for a second time that evening. This pilot is BY FAR the worst PVPer I have run across in this game. You would think that he would have learned or adapted by now. I couldn’t help but ask in local what the hell he thought he was doing. He proceeded to bash us, the game and said he was going back to WoW. What a night.